Page 361 - The Pony Who Cried Wolf

Author Notes:

In a tabletop game, differentiating between different types of suspicious behavior is important. And impossible.

More often than not, the telltale signs of trouble get completely overlooked by the players as standard operating procedure, and otherwise pointless new details get flagged as clear signs of a doppelganger and/or mind control.

It happened to me once. I and another player spent a good 45 minutes working to secretly tie up and interrogate our ship's captain, only to find out (after blowing a couple of our most powerful social Daily powers) that his self-consciousness and slightly off appearance was due to a minor illusion enchantment he'd picked up in town to hide a few gray hairs. It was highly embarrassing.

39 Comments:

One Shadowrun character I played was a mage with a dog tail and matching ears due to a surge instance when she was younger. She always hid them under her clothing (and always wore a hat) because she was self-conscious about them.

Few other players had suspicions, but none bothered to find out. :) Even the one time I didn't hide the ears and tail, the party thought it was part of the costume. Ha!

Easy: I ran a campaign once where the PCs were the BBEGs. The game starts with them all suffering a light bout of amnesia due to a failed teleporter accident and I gave clues out for them to piece together who they really were.

They never figured it out until they got to the final BBEG "War Room" and found their names upon the chairs. *THEN* all the clues made perfect sense in their heads.

as a DM, I run a game where I prepare 3 plotlines in advance so the players have a choice of what to do (I am attempting a campaign almost entirely free of any sort of railroading, save the very first mission which was to introduce all the characters).
Aside from the first mission we have had 8 games in this campaign so far. Each time I started by describing the area they were in and leaving subtle hints of what would start missions (there is a goblin walking through town but none of the townsfolk seem worried, there is a group of kids chasing a dog holding something shining in it's mouth, and there is a large crowd outside the church for reasons you don't know).
3 of 8 times did they take the bait. Once they just immediately left town and went on a picnic (that was the entire game, I didn't even throw in a random encounter just to see how they would act), once they went to the magic guild and decided to try to learn magic without being in magic classes, once they wanted to see if the rogue could steal a guard's jail key without being noticed and on success [nat20] they went to the prison and reported it as a lost item. Sometimes I feel bad I don't get to tell a story, but the best stories do come from the unexpected. I love my group:D

I had something like that happen in a party years ago. We did have dopplegangers but because of how the attack happened not all the PCs were present and one of the PC looked up and saw him, chasing his partner with his partner chasing him and promptly walked back into his tavern, bought a keg of ale and sat it out.

I was part of a campaign where we had to fight all sorts of undead, mutated, cold bearing animals. Of course, we left our most intelligent character back in town while the party was being led by the most unperceptibe Druid ever (long story). The DM was practically beating her head on her desk as we completely missed the fact that they were anything other than regular feral animals (or moving rocks in the druid's case).

In my current campaign my players investigate almost all minor details that are there just to flesh out the setting. Including things like somebody playing not-known to them board game or drunken babbling of tavern patrons. But they were able to miss:
1) Fact that one of them was replaced by changeling - and started having fear of heights, become more social and diplomatic and stopped using barbarian rage (which changeling does not have).
2)That it was strange for a peasants to pay adventures in expensive as hell gems
3) That random killings on the road correlated strongly with patrol routes of one famous knight. They ignored this completely. He was innocent - somebody was framing him and players were too dumb to be fooled. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooDumbToFool

You know, I think I need a break from polls.
So instead...
Shippers Unite.
So here's how it goes:
I'll name 2 ponies, and you guys has to make a scene with them. best one wins.
The scene could be one of 3
Asking During the Aftermath.
In Asking, one pony is asking the other on a date.
During, is well during said date.
Aftermath is will there be another date, maybe a kiss goodnight.
Just 2 things, first no boring during the asking phase, You can have the other pony reject, just don't boring. 2nd, keep sort of in charter.
That's all.
This is the first time, so I'll give 2 pairings
The spa couple, Rarity and Fluttershy
The down to earth reader, Twilight and Applejack.

Yep... I predict that Twilight's exploding into fire will be the result of her fustration reaching a peak... after being railroaded, dealing with the GMNPC, facing a giant monster they can't hope to win against... etc.

I dunno, I'm kind of thinking that Pinkie's pulling a very elaborate, inept con that succeeds far beyond her expectations because the others think she's just being a poor DM. They only find out she's conning them once they find the hydra, which Twilight defeats soundly by using a daily that causes her to self-immolate as it's swallowing her.

Banjo, I like the way you think.
Pinkie: Duh it was a prank. Seriously, what did you think was going on?
Twilight: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
AJ: GM PC?
Pinkie: Yeah, for one session. There's no way I'd get away with this if it was real.

My thoughts? One of the feats Pinkie Pie recently learned she could take involves unusual methods of precognition based on a more advanced perception check. However, it only warns the one who has the ability unless the rest of the party is experienced in interpreting the signs...and Pinkie intends to use this session as a coaching for said signs.

PP: But they ARE experienced in interpreting it. That was the entire plot of the session I DMed.
DM: ...no.

In one game I was running, the players were called to lift a siege on a monastery, home to the monastic order of one of the paladins in the party. When they finally get inside the monastery after a daring mission requiring their 8-man team to punch through the entire enemy army (which was one of the most fun encounters I've run to date), the leader of the order asks if they'd like to sit down and have tea. Maybe take a little tour. The players immediately take this as a sign that he's in cahoots with the enemy. Given that his monastery was besieged and he's asking them to have tea, I can't blame them for that assumption. What was *actually* going on was that the only way into the monastery was an incredibly narrow pass up the mountain on which it rests, and the besieging forces were all the way at the bottom blocking any supply lines and such while they tried to send infiltrators in. Said infiltrators made their move top of next session. Thanks to PC intervention, their astounding takedown of an entire monastic order was reduced to just a couple of dead monks.

In fact, that whole quest line had a lot of fun sessions. This is also the same monastery where the players found the OP ghost paladin I've talked about, and the sessions about both getting in and lifting the siege were crazy fun. Getting into the place they had to make a mad dash through the enemy camp while enemies emerged from the tents at random during the enemy turn every round. On their way in, the party wizard used a fire spell on one of the tents to burn down the camp. Which worked great for the area immediately in front of the path before it was contained. That meant that when it came time to lift the siege, they had to fight on a battlefield of smoldering flames and choking ash where most of the battlefield was hazardous terrain. The enemy? Unaffected since the hazard was smoke inhalation and Shardminds don't have lungs.

For Pinkie and Flutters, I got as close as I could as there is no bard or druid careers. I figured with Pinkie, fixing things and making potions would work, with Flutters, making potions and being a ranger would work. The others are pretty close to what they would be. Any comments?

And it's been dropped. To be honest, I was never fond of Spike. He's not a bad character, just never found him interesting. I might have him as an NPC house servant or something, but not a warjack. I concidered making Rarity a Warcaster as well, but sticking as close to the D&D classes was more interesting.

There isnt a druid class in the current iron kingdoms book. The original book had rules fur converting D&D classes over. If i can find my copy of the old book and my old players handbook, ill see what i can do.